Day 76: Lost

A Rose Released

As I walk down Portobello Road I am noticing my heart opening to embrace this scuddy, electic, quirky, tie-dyed world of my neighbourhood.  It dawns on me how much and for what a long time I have been resisting London, desiring and yearning to be elsewhere than here.  It seems I am surrenduring to the Summer bouyancy of it, curious about the fedora with a feather, the decor of L’Epicerie, the possibility of a stall in the Portobello Arcade, sniffing at the La Cave a Fromage and making notes to self of the multitude of wine bars and cafes that have to be tried on.  Like yesterday there seems to be a different dawning, a drive to action, to stepping into life and experiencing it.  It seems like I have been stopped waiting for the green light to go for far too long.  I am not in a hurry but I notice that I am not in the effortless ease of the ebb and flow of Friday afternoon browsers, tourists and lackadasical locals.  Perhaps I am still crunching on my gears; out of sync I am clumsy.  I bump into and graze off crusing human beings and the subtle irritation builds as the opticians are closed before closing time, the dress I love is in every size but mine and there is no sign of mint in Tescos.

By the time I get home I am juice-day hungry.  And then I notice that I haven’t got my phone.  I have a grrrr in my gut now.  Back to Tescos but there is no sign of it.  The market stalls I stopped at are wrapped up and closed for the day.  We ring and ring my number and it just goes to voicemail.  The O2 chat agent bars the phone and reorders my SIM in no time at all. I am lucky it is only 3 weeks to my contract renewal date and I am already eligible for an upgrade but my plan to forego the cost of a new handset may well be scuppered unless, like Mary Ellen’s nose, my phone turns up.  Lost perhaps is really just waiting for me to come back.

Update:  Lost WAS just waiting for me to come back – what joy to release my photos.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 75: The Medicine Is Working!

Iced Pink Sky, Dalgarno Gardens, London W10

The changes are subtle but not insignificant.  I am sleeping better, not so much going to bed earlier but when I sleep oh do I sleep and for long luxurious stretches.  After last week’s training extravaganza I slept for a solid 10 hours.  It was so delicious.  Not that I knew it was delicious at the time but waking up knowing how long and how well I slept was a delicious feeling, sensually delicious in fact.

But here are other signs too.  Today I got the bright idea to join the local Library.  Now I have lived where I live for over 16 years and the library has been here for all of that time and even longer.  It has never crossed my mind to join the library.  Today it seemed so obvious.  Clearly there are a confluence of factors; I love reading, particularly before I go to sleep.   My inclination is to buy the books I want to read; many of them I want to keep but more of them I pass on to Oxfam books or sell on Amazon now that I am actively keeping my personal possessions to a minimum.  Of course I have gone geeky and I love my Kindle books but sitting in front of a screen all day, followed by a little telly, doesnt endear me to read a Kindle book. Financially things are also tenuous and I cannot justify prolifligate spending on books thugh not a month goes buy when I don’t by at least one.

The idea to join the Library hit me like a flash of light – a flash that has been travelling at a very slow speed from a very long way away.  Joining the library was so exciting, even if the Librarian in charge appeared to poking her eyes out to keep boredom at bay, despite the raucous belching and farting from a bunch of study resistant school girls and the heavy somulence of some amphorous other bodies.  I was excited by my choice of plastic membership cards.  I went funky town.  I was excited by the invitation to take out up to 25 items of which 15 could be books! I was tempted by the audio books but Spotify does me for CDs and blinkbox serves my video needs at a comparable price with the addition of Tesco Clubcard points which I convert to airmiles.  In the end I read about the iChing, the Mayan 2012 prophecies – which is a little pointless now unless they were out by a year or three – and The Evening Standard before I got excited all over again about the electronic wizardry used to check the books out. Gone are the days of rubber stamps and handwritten dates though curiously all of the books come with a check out slip.

And if the whole Library idea wasnt enough I found myself dashing out of the flat up to the park to capture photos of an iced pink sky.  Without a coat.  Seriously the wonders will never cease.  It could my recent Creative Warrior training, the HRT trial, my recent haircut,  a combination or all three or none of the above. Whatever it is it is different and I am liking it.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 74: Sainsburys Sky
The weather is teasing us.  The calender says June but the Guy in the sky is playing April or is it October?  The firmament is cluttered with clouds, rent-a-cloud are doing unseasonally good business.  Ducking and diving between showers I get to yoga and up to Sainsbury’s, it is mild but my bicycle saddle is soggy.  It is tempting to keep my hood up and my head down but my heart is watching out for awe and wonder.  I marvel at the clotted vista above Sainsburys’ Car Park. At home the guffaw of greenery at my window and the twinkling of the elusive sun tantilise me while steel grey heavens and sudden weeping tears deter me.  Summer should be here but it is playing hide and seek today.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 73: Memories Of Rita

Tramore, Ireland April 2014

It is the 3rd June.  This day 3 years ago my mother’s only sister died.  She was 81 and up a ladder.  A momentary shout distracted her and she fell in slow motion.  It was a relief that she didn’t linger but it was a shocking way for my Auntie Rita to go.  She had lived a life of wild ups and serious downs, she could and would still flirt outrageously with any receptive young man, she loved her nightly sup of whisky and was a divil for a party.  I remember she took me to the circus when I was about 7.  It was such a treat though I very much resisted being asked to slip in under the tent to save the cost of the ticket.  Her spam in batter, an inspired budget meal, was a novelty of the highest order.

She complained about the heat in Adelaide where she had lived for over 4 decades and when she came to Ireland, well it was much too cold.  She loved a bargain; voraciously collecting coupons and stocking up on special offers.  She gifted practical gadgets and was great to make do and mend.  Her life had run the gamut of the emotional scale but she had survived and was even beginning to thrive as she made peace with losses, mishaps and misdemenours.  She dabbled in dragon boat racing in her 70s and guided by one of her daughters she was experiencing the catharis of acting and writing.  The text message this morning reminded me of hearing my mother’s breaking heart when she called to tell me the news this day 3 years ago.  It am right back to the shock and incomprehension of the sudden disappearance of her body and soul through a gash in the invisible veil.  Then as now a stark relief against the apparent mundanity of the day.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 72: The Gentian

The Gentian courtesy of TripAdvisor Photos

A friend of mine has a birthday this week.  She used to live in London but is now based in the West of Ireland.  We met up quite frequently as she passed through London on business but since February 2012 when I started my peripetetic ambulations that thread of connection has been frayed.  It took a birthday reminder to wake me up to the realisation of the fading.  Now I know that our connection is one that can be revived at the drop of a choice; we are both travellers, would be global citizens.  We could reconvene over Thai in London, a cocktail perhaps down Piccadilly way, in the warm evening heat of the South of France with a glass of wine or course, or hot toddys by the fire in a garrulous Irish pub or on wind blown quayside perched on the shore of Galway Bay.

I thought the very least I could do was to send a card, a real one for a change, but had to drop an email to get a postal address.  She directed me to a new town hinting at a different life.  It struck me how our busy lives so full to us are unbeknownest to others and in that space it is easy for friendships to casually fall by the way side.  We are fortunate to live in an age when email addresses and mobile numbers keep us more connected than our forefathers.  I had the flicker of an impulse to look up the address she gave me; The Genetian, Kinvara.  What a surprise to discover that since we last met she has with her partner gone in to the Cafe business.  They set it up in 3 months in 2012 and she has just finished a 3 month stint immersed in cooking with Darina Allen of Ballymaloe House, Co. Cork.  Not a huge surprise as C. has loved the work she has done in the hospitality business but I had not expected her to take from Executive Coaching to hands on mainstays of bacon and butties as well as the more sophisticated pleasures of warm beef fillet salad, lemon sole, spanakopita and a barrage of sweet toothed afters; marmalade bread and butter pudding, crunchy orange butter scones, lemon meringe lattice.  And that is just what I have picked up from the TripAdvisor reviews and The Genetian Facebook page.  As a lover or food and cafe life I am a little biasied but the joy and pleasure of this project radiates from it now that I have spotted it.  Like it’s namesake flower this cafe looks sure to be a curative for hunger of all sorts.  It looks like myself and C. just might cross paths this Summer in London and I am looking forward to hearing about and celebrating this creation.  The awesomeness of the unexpected.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 71: Pillar Box Rust A few weeks ago I was down at the Royal Brompton Hospital in South Kensington.  South Kensington is sedate, well kept and not a hair out of place.  One of the things I marvelled at was the bright, shiny, spruceness of the red pillar boxes.  I even contemplated them as a topic for a days of awe post but the photographs al beit shiny and red had a flatness and superficiality that did nothing to inspire my creative juices.  Unlike my local North Kensington post box which I used today.  I noticed it’s chipped and tried smile in contrast to the polished perfection of it’s South Kensington cousins.  I couldn’t quite see the top of the box but my camera could.  What a landscape!  It could be the moon, if the moon were red.  Far more interesting than the inaccessible surface of newly painted surfaces.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 70: In-No-SenseWilliam Whitecloud is completing his visit to the UK with the delivery of his final Meet Your Genius two day event in London.  This two day workshop is designed to introduce everyone to their highest level of creativity and reveal that each of us have innate talent and genius that can be accessed at will.  It was at a workshop like this 5 years ago that my appetite for creative mastery was whetted and the training I have undertaken since has opened up a whole new world of adventure and artistry.  I may have done a workshop like this before but I have never done THIS workshop, it may look like the same material, we may cover the same premises but when I am present to the unadulterated moment it is never the same.  The ability to surrender the need to know, to step outside the preception of our belief and definitions is a place where we can see the world with the awe and wonder of innocence.  In-No-Sense where even the grubby carpet in the Kensington Close Hotel becomes a cornucopia of fascination.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 69: Late Night FlowersI had no idea until I started doing this blog that I was so captivated, engrossed and relentlessly curious about nature’s growth; flowers, trees, leaves, seeds, grass you name it wherever I go I seem to be attracted to the orderly chaos of it all.  Now that I have become conscious of this umblical draw I can only deduce that it speaks to a deeper part of me that does not and cannot defer to the realm of logic but rather resides with Wonder in the realm of Awe.  I came home from a foray to the shops and Gaby, one of my two model tenants, had gifted me this happy bunch garrulous Spring flowers.  Just writing this I thought to google what they might be so I typed in ‘yellow iris lilies‘.  I had no idea that there was any such thing.  I thought they look a bit like irises, or lilies and they are yellow.  Guess what there is such a thing as iris lilies!  I had no idea I had this information.  Perhaps I don’t.  As I said this part of me resides in Awe beyond my rational mind.  I took this photo in the late night light just before I turned in for the night bursting with gratitude for flowers and bearers of surprise gifts. Thank you Gaby!

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 68: Dogwood Day

My phone has not been working since Monday.  One of the reasons why I got the HTC One S Smart Phone was because of the camera quality.  I dropped it shortly after I bought it and before I had taken the precaution of a protective case so the cover is chipped and the glass is achingly fractured.  More recently the charging connection has seemed a little tempermental.  My contract is up in July and I am hoping to switch to SIM only.  On Monday all attempts to resuscitate the red charging light were doomed to failure which had a direct impact on my Days Of Awe project.  Without my camera I was adrift and my curiosity about the visual world around me was tempered.  As it happened this was a very neat reflection of my reality; taking a deep introspective dive on William Whitecloud’s Creative Warror training at Barnett Hill, Wornesh, Surrey the spotlight was on my internal landscape.  Back in London on Thursday I took a reticent visit to the Geek Squad at Carphone Warehouse. Their first step was to put the phone on charge.  I wasn’t too hopefully but I waited refusing to dive into the tangle of of despair that not having a phone would precipitate; the hassle, the cost. Not something I wanted to contemplate so I didn’t.  And then as if by magic the world was at rights again.

On the way home I was startled by these showy roadside flowers, a lone specimen in a row of regular scrawny kerb side crawlers,  sedate and elegant amongst the roadside geezers and quite exotic too it would seem possibly a Japanese Dogwood.  A relief to be back to capturing my experience of life.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 67: Emerging From The Portal

Foxglove, Barnett Hill

Imagine, if you will, being deeply silently wrapped in a womb like blanket for four days, exploring the unending corridors of your own mind and pysche, unravelling the layers of the onion that is you.  See yourself dropping away from the surface noise of the machinations of the world, of diaries and dramas to synchronise with the heart beat of the moment; steady, rythmic, all consuming, nourishing.  Now imagine emerging from that chrysallis, raw, vulnerable, wide eye, wonderous and not a little stupefied.  It is like emerging into the world from the pink spotted palm of a foxglove.  The world is big, boisterous, mystical and mind boggling.  We are may not be visibly different but we are reconfigured; equipped with sword and sheild, brave hearted warrior’s for love and truth.  Bye bye Creative Warrior  training and the bosom of Barnett Hill, hello to the unknown and a new way of living.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  Anne is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.